


Come Undone

by Aenigmatic



Category: Marvel, Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies), Thor - All Media Types
Genre: Adult Content, Alternate Universe, Angst and Tragedy, As far as the imagination goes, Bastard Loki, Character Death, Christmas, Clueless Jane, Crack, Darkfic, Depraved, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Gen, Historical, Holidays, Humour, Implied Relationships, Implied Sexual Content, Lokane AU, Monstrosity, Multi, Mythology - Freeform, Sort of Consensual, The Funnies, loads of sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-16
Updated: 2015-10-20
Packaged: 2018-02-21 09:38:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 16,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2463635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aenigmatic/pseuds/Aenigmatic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lokane prompts and fills and drabbles shoved under one roof. Crackish, angsty-ish and everything else in between. Mostly unrelated one-shots just long enough to hold my attention.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sea Change

Written for _Startraveller776_ 's Crush the Feels Challenge on Tumblr.

oOo

_A.D. 793, Northumbria_

The news had travelled unusually fast, the harried, terrified chatters of the villagers bringing the word that the heathens had crossed the misty seas down to the Holy Island like spectres in the night bringing the fires of hell. The villages dotting the gentle curve of the sand near the breaking waves are no more. The numbers of those who walk inland increase by the day, their terrifying tales of the savage heathens growing taller and dribblingly foolish in proportion to the amount of mead that they imbibe.

It takes a week for Jane to hear that Lindisfarena had fallen. That its broken, burning walls can be glimpsed from the broad, sandy stretch across the sea at its lowest, as the dawning sun heralds a new age of the Northmen in Northumbria.

They are more animals than men, it seems, spawned by heathen gods that propagate their own kind. Tall, long-haired and filthy beasts who plunder and rape, yet build the most beautiful ships that glide weightless through the water as they move their oars in silent, synchronistic rhythms attuned to the bobbing waves led by the fierce sea serpents carved high into their sterns and prows.

Every visit is fleeting, but brutal. Slaughtered blood already marks the rocks a permanent, deep red.

Jane heaves the bucket of water that she is carrying and walks the two-mile journey back to the village. Quelling the growing unease is futile, as each leaden step brings her closer to the possibility of falling to the same fate as the women in the other villages had.

oOo

The next raid begins a few months later, burning their earnest hopes of peace to ashes.

Jane turns tail and runs, not stopping to calibrate the myths of the pagan Northmen in her mind with the reality of the thundering hooves of horses, propelled only by the screams of the children who come to know the meaning of separation and death in the cruellest way. Suddenly, she is thankful that her own parents had died long before the pagans had ever stepped foot on their shores.

Thankful that she is alone in a hearth gone cold when her ailing aunt fell into a feverish fit that ended the only way as their healer had solemnly predicted.

In the stables, the horses whinny, panicked by the heat from the fire on the thatched roofs. She is frantically untying the rope that secures Orvyn to his stall when the fragile walls crumple in on themselves.

oOo

She is mounted awkwardly on a horse when her eyes flutter open, held roughly against a surreal composite of metal, dripping blood and exposed flesh. Her face is close enough to the Northman’s sword for her to see its patterned welding and labyrinthine lines.

Dimly, Jane hears the harsh, rolling tongue of the marauders interspersed with their laughter, recognising a few words and phrases that seem to indicate the success of their recent plunder. She notices the long, golden hair that streams out beneath the man’s helmet and the easy strength that surrounds him like an impenetrable shield. Beneath the chainmail, his woollen shirt is tattered and stained, the pungent scent of stale blood permeating the air.

She closes her eyes again, thinking of the comforting smoke of a cooking fire in her hearth.

Thor Odinsson, as Jane learns later, is the name of the warlord whose horse she’s found herself on, the fearsome leader of the _langskips_ that had most recently pushed their way up the Northumbrian coast. Perhaps she should be grateful that she has yet to be sold as a slave in the market or brought back to the North to be one of the many women who will serve him solely in the bedroom— a fate that is surely worse than death.

oOo

The weeks living and working with the other women captured on the raids had taught her to keep her head down, and in that, the language barrier is easily overcome enough, with a few tweaks of the pronunciation and active listening of the conversations around her.

What is most surprising of all is the unexpected affection that Thor shows her, making her reluctantly reconsider her once-belligerent stance towards the heathen Northmen. He seeks her out more than he should for a man of his social standing, sharing his meat and mead with her whenever he deems appropriate, his bulky, tall, golden form an incongruous mark against the dreary landscape and even drearier living conditions.

Jane is under no illusion that the seeming goodwill of the rest of his men will only endure as long as she remains under Odinsson’s protection. But as vague as Thor Odinsson’s intentions are, it does not take too long before she harbours the short-lived and forbidden thought that a life with the heathen men — with Thor Odinsson at her side — might be a possibility.

oOo

Their temporary camp along the northern portion of the Northumbria coast lasts longer than usual and Jane’s naïve elation that they might have found a permanent place of settlement is dashed to the rocks when it becomes clear that Odinsson is merely awaiting the next fleet of longships to crest the horizon.

The glint of triumph in Odinsson’s eyes and the frenzied shouts of his men late one summer morning send her running to the shore along with the rest.

She sees it for herself this time — the large fleet of eight longships that appear as miniscule specks backlit by the summer sun, led by the ship in the middle that sweeps effortlessly across the sea by the swinging oars that slice deep into the shimmering waves.

“ _Svo_ _hefir_ _kominn bróðir mín_.”

Odinsson’s low murmur of satisfaction is a jolt to her own heart. The increment of the Northmen’s numbers will upset the delicate balance of the camp, which at its status quo, consists of an uneasy truce between the Northumbrians and their truculent invaders because of the sheer force of Odinsson’s charismatic presence amongst them.

The clouds roll over the heavens and the coastal winds turn unusually cold by the time Loki Odinsson’s longship rides up the hard shingle beach.

The women cross themselves and beg the saints for mercy and timely intervention.

Jane simply looks upwards and tastes the first of the bitter raindrops on her tongue.

oOo

It is not until the evening meal when she finally sees and recognises that Loki is the opposite of his brother in every conceivable way.

 

Dark to Thor’s golden colouring and just as tall, made of soft, compelling ambiguous speech that runs seductive lines from her throat to sternum. Jötunn, the giant one, as he is laughingly called by Thor, a constant reminder of his heritage of being the orphaned son of the fallen warrior Laufeyson whom Odin Borson had taken under his wing as a bairn.

Whether it is the amount of ale consumed that night or the atypical late hour after which the men had finally passed out in front of the cooking fires, Jane cannot fathom the circumstances in which she finds herself surrounded by the lean, compact strength of Loki and the sharp, intelligent greenness of his gaze. And then she is lying on the warm furs that he has already spread in his own tent shelter away from the rest of the men, gasping her strangled pleasure in his insistent mouth.

oOo

Jane hears Loki Laufeyson’s mocking laugh outside his shelter tent the morning after and the sounds of a scuffle not far away. She creeps out of tent quietly, ashamed of the boundaries that Loki had crossed without a single thought, wincing at the smear of blood on his jaw as he bears the punishment of Thor’s fury.

He gets up laboriously after a short roll in the mud, the speed of his return swing of his fist into his brother’s face making her bite her lip until the flesh — already made sore and delicate by his own questing lips — rends apart.

The brief flash of anguish in Thor’s eyes tells her more than she needs to know. That his brother had operated under no pretence of wooing or sweet words had made him the easy victor of the spoils and in turn, fashioned her a loose woman for the taking.

But their world is hard cast that way — of broad swords and shed blood and endless fighting and to accept the measure of violence and quick punishment that is ever present is to accept that Loki had easily accomplished all that Thor had never managed to do. Brothers will always fight as they do but their tenuous bond will hold, as long as there is land for the taking, where the scent of blood stays fresh and stimulating.

It is more than both of them deserve as they have taken too much, too soon.

So she stays put even as tears lash her face, at the entrance to his shelter, letting the men see her that way until Loki returns, waiting for the sweet lies he will continue to whisper into her ears. 

\----------

_A/N: I’m (mis)using Old Norse based on what I know of modern Icelandic. Apologies to the linguists purists who think this is rubbish._

_Svo_ _hefir_ _kominn bróðir mín_ – Thus has my brother arrived.


	2. Spent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The trap that she's caught in is of her own making. Or is it?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written using Artemisday’s Prompt on Tumblr: 
> 
> “…love don’t make things nice – it ruins everything. It breaks your heart. It makes things a mess. We aren’t here to make things perfect. The snowflakes are perfect. The stars are perfect. Not us. Not us! We are here to ruin ourselves and to break our hearts and love the wrong people and die. The storybooks are bullshit. “
> 
> Warning: Filthy. Deals with infidelity the whole way through, though I can’t bring myself to regret anything here. Lokane isn’t for kiddies anyway. Or at least that’s how I justify such writing.

She hears the orchestral suite in her head. Apt that it’s the only one she remembers – Holst’s _Neptune_ –, the pianissimo and the eerie voices that proclaim the mystery, distance and unanswerable questions of the solar system’s most distant planet.

Accepting the oddity of the moment, Jane takes a second to register the light chuckle of the man above her. He’s working her expertly with his body, pulling all the appropriate reactions from her that she hadn’t been willing to give.

Oh, the lies she tells herself.

_Why?_

“But this is Thor, my dear Jane. And he is who he is.”

His whisper wafts past her ear and she shudders helplessly in the spell of his making, realising that she’d just spoken that word out loud. Even in his strangled rasp, she detects his freely-taken pleasure and repulsive disgust – in equal parts. There isn’t a compulsion for Loki to say more, no need for him to explicitly state that the storybooks are bullshit, that their happy-ever-afters weave false endings of tongue-catching snowflakes and tender kisses.

Jane moans his _brother’s_ name instead, then asks for more as she doles out her own brand of punishment for the both of them.

“Oh, really?”

Loki complies with a small knowing grin, riding her contradiction the way she wants him to. Their rocking turns savage, bordering on painful but her legs curl tighter around his thighs, welcoming each invasion with soft whimpers. The headboard of the magnificent four-poster slams against the wall, the loud sound of wood knocking on plaster temporarily startling her out of the downward spiral of need.

Why had she expected any different? Perhaps the naïveté had never left after all, not since the toy telescope had been placed in her small hands and the stars had perfectly aligned in that moment to tell her that they would be the only unchanging elements she’d live by.

But she’d still believed somehow in perfect moment, up until that second when he’d shattered her concept of relationships and love with cutting words as well placed as his sharp thrusts.

With his weight in her arms, Jane feels the compulsion to hurt him as he hurts her, even though she thinks there will only be a smidgen of remorse for what he is doing now. Or none at all, because his impervious front cannot be stripped by someone so much lesser than him.

“Sigyn. What about…Sigyn?”

She stutters out that name, proud of the fact that she’s able to speak as he pressing her hard into the mattress. Her hips lift of their own accord, greedy for the hard press of his fingertips on them. They’ll bruise black and blue, then yellow as they fade. She’ll want the throb between her legs to match the dull throb of pain when he grabs her.

Instead, his tongue and teeth graze the sensitive skin along her shoulder as he considers the question with mock caution. Finally, levering himself up on his forearms, his green eyes glint with impertinent amusement and not a little pity. The rhythm of his hips does not falter, the bulbous head of his erection still hitting a tender spot over and over as he indulges her.

His answer is the same. And a world apart from what she expected.

“Sigyn?” A look of satisfaction crosses his face as Jane gives in to the mindless build-up of the pressure at the base of her spine.

“She is what she is.”

The enduring, ever-faithful wife who suffers long through her own husband’s indiscretions. The resigned truth echoes in her head that’s already reeling with her _own_ fiancé’s betrayal–

All talk is momentarily forgotten as he flips himself onto his back and takes her with him and she finds herself straddling his thighs, facing forward and straight into the large mirror that mutely magnifies the sheer insolence of her position. Astonishingly, confronting the visual representation of their slapping bodies makes her wetter—and him even harder.

His talented fingers creep around her, finding what she wants them to find and coax a scream from her throat as he groans his own completion not longer after.

_Adulteress. Broken. Cheater. Cuckhold._

A hysterical laugh bubbles up between her clenched teeth as she thinks of the A-B-Cs and the words that can describe this fucked-up family.

His breaths are uneven as he speaks. “Why do you ask, Jane Foster?”

Her own heavy pants override her thoughts as she shakes her head, already reconfiguring that _new_ and disconcerting experience with Loki as one that’s best forgotten.

As though he’d just heard that silent promise she’d made to herself, he says softly, “This is just science, my dear Jane.”

Right on time.

How she’d managed to forget the propriety with which she normally conducts her affairs is beyond her comprehension and yet she loves that he meets her rush of guilt head on in the only way he knows.

Jane swallows the sob in her throat. “Is it?”

She has never detested this brother as much as she desires him. He finds all the right things to say, satisfying the happily-dancing devil with the pitchfork on her shoulder, his words resonating with the rising guilt that she cannot tamp down even as she seeks absolution in a man who takes more than he gives.

He rolls slightly away from her and places his hands beneath his head in an apparent posture of satisfaction.

“In words that you might identify with, we could call this an…experiment of sorts. Two matched entities coming together successfully. A biological imperative. After all this time, isn’t it why you’ve so conveniently placed yourself in my bed when both Thor and Sigyn are away?” 

Perverse _and_ true, a clever and surefire way to downplay all that had transpired between them in the past hour spent in a sweaty mess between the sheets. He doesn’t dismiss her calculated move but he isn’t exulting it with that quiet, smugness that she thought he would. Yet the pleasure and bitterness she hears in his voice robs her of speech, and strangely, he is the first to look away.

Jane feels his fingers run a line down her sweaty cheek, watching in fascination as the moonlight wraps itself around him like a prized possession. His hands trail over the curve of her shoulder, backlit by white luminescence. They move down her arms, until they entwine with hers, demonstrating an intimacy that aches as true and pure as it is unwanted. After all, her need to deny and backtrack is altogether transparent and Loki allows her to do so in the cruellest way possible. The aftermath of their spent passion is as tender as a married pair’s coupling on their wedding night, the sheer strength of her tangled emotions undoubtedly adding to the haze of passion they’d managed to create all on their own.

The smirk that crosses his face softens into a genuine smile and it takes her breath away. Just for that second before it disappears into the inscrutable green depth of his eyes.

A hard push and she is lodged beneath him again, feeling his hardness against her sticky and trembling thighs that are still protesting her recent shenanigans in a bed that’s not hers.

He is strangely persistent with that question which she’d thought was rhetorical.

“Isn’t it why you came?”

There isn’t a fight to give up, she thinks dimly as he slips easily into her.

“Yes. That is why,” she finally tells him.

He leans down with a chaste kiss on the side of her mouth, and all she sees is him.


	3. When an Asgardian goes shopping

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just as the chapter title says. Asking for Christmas Lokane prompts last year wasn't too bright of me.

_Prompt fill: Jane takes loki (grudgingly) Christmas shopping…because xmas fluff._

* * *

 

If Loki had surprised her by asking to come along as she does her Christmas shopping, it’s nothing compared to the priceless reaction that flashes across his face as he shoves his way through the crowds in the town’s largest mall.

“What is this madness that has befallen Midgard?” He practically shouts his disbelief into her face as he wrestles with an enormous pile of tinsel that has gotten itself entangled in their basket.

“We call it the pre-Christmas sales,” Jane replies with a yell of her own. “You did say you wanted to come.”

She’s surlier than she normally is and as much as it pains her to admit, it really isn’t quite Loki’s fault this time around.

Or maybe it is.

It isn’t too often that a tall stranger with a posh accent forms a part of the usual shopping crowd here, but when that happens, there are those – particularly of the female sex – who take notice of it the way a shark detects the scent of blood from afar. 

Damn him for choosing to do his Christmas shopping in an expensively-conjured up suit anyway. Among other men who were in trainers, jeans and unmatching coats, Loki was getting all the attention he would ever need in several Asgardian lifetimes.

And he would have never needed to conquer Earth the hard way when most women in the mall looked ready to throw themselves at his feet as he walked past.

“This is possibly a misjudgement on my part.”

Losing his patience as he kicks off the last of the tinsel, Loki teleports them straight into the haberdashery section just as she is examining a pair of black heels, planting the both of them in a relatively quiet aisle that has colourful spools of wool and neatly-displayed knitting needles.

“And here I thought mortals had truly evolved beyond behaviour deemed acceptable.”

Ignoring his snide comment, Jane spends the next few seconds trying to reorientate as she normally does when Loki tears a hole in space-time too quickly for her liking.

“Who said all human behaviour was rational? And where the hell are we-”

The sharp clicks of stilettos across the hard floor make her break off in annoyance.

Of course the aisle wouldn’t stay empty for long.

The giggling women follow in their wake barely five seconds after they’d teleported out of the shoe section of the store, undeterred by _her_ constant presence by his side. They’re well-dressed – perhaps overly so for an excursion such as this – and dolled up to the nines like mannequins at a masquerade ball, Jane thinks uncharitably. Irritation prickles her skin as she notes their blatant stares and inviting smiles aimed solely at Loki. It bothers her much more than the vicious glares that they level at her.

Damn him for looking too good in a place like this. And damn _her_ for suddenly regressing a few million years in evolutionary behaviour.

Jane has never touted herself as a possessive and a jealous woman…until now.

Flashing them a malicious grin, she loops a deliberate arm around Loki’s neck and pulls his face down towards hers, exaggerating every action for her unwitting audience. It’s easy to lose herself in him as always, too hard to admit how deep their desires run, she realises as her tongue tangles with his own in a desperate dance that couldn’t have hinted at a thirst that had been slaked a mere hour ago beneath crumpled sheets.

When they finally surface for air, the aisle is clear again.

“You acted with a purpose in mind,” he tells her knowingly. "Staking your claim, I see."

Jane doesn’t bother denying it, not when she’s too self-satisfied to care about the hint of mockery in his voice that she hears. Not when she’s happily blaming Loki’s incredibly bad influence in her life for her current behaviour.

“You seemed to like it,” she tells him breezily.

“Oh, I did enjoy myself,” he says smugly as he cants his head towards the next aisle where a larger, second group of women lie in wait to catch a glimpse of their exotic specimen. Taking a step closer to her, he murmurs with a sly look, “As I’m about to enjoy the second part of the Jane Foster show even more.”

She gulps.

His grin widens in response. “Do your worst, my lady.”


	4. The tree

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yet another Christmas prompt. Last year, I might have been a little drunk to have done this.

_Prompt fill: Loki gets Jane something completely insane for Christmas._

* * *

 

“It’s tiny,” he declares curtly as he watches Jane delicately pick a red bauble out of a worn box that houses her Midgardian Yule treasures. “When you talked about the Yuletide tradition of acquiring a tree, it hadn’t occurred to me that you were seeking a small shrub for your living space instead of a proper spruce.”

“It’s not as though we’ve got the space to bring in anything bigger,” Jane tells him pointedly as she looks at the bookshelves that sag under the weight of their combined books. “And before you say or do anything, I’d rather not wake up to an enlarged ceiling again,” she continues as she hangs the last piece of the decoration on a branch that seems to wilt under its weight.

He eyes the abominable shrub in mild distaste as Jane steps back and admires her handiwork.

“Now all we need are presents to put under it.”

“Presents?” Loki repeats flatly, carefully noting the disgruntled look that’s appearing on her face.

“I thought we agreed on a gift exchange this year.”

“So we did.”

Loki feels a short, sharp poke in the chest as she stares indignantly up at him. “I bought you something, you know, and that took me a damn long time deciding what to get you. So I hope you didn’t forget mine.”

He can’t help the chuckle that escapes his lips. “I was simply commenting on the inability of the shrub’s base to contain sizeable and worthy gifts.”

“Sizeable and wort-hey, mine’s a small but meaningful-” Her tirade is interrupted by the nasal chime of the doorbell. “Someone’s at the door,” she announces in disbelief as she glances at the clock. “At this time of the night?”

He waves a casual hand in the direction of the doorway. “Why don’t you look?”

He gets another dirty look as she gets up and disappears out of his sight. A loud gasp echoes through the hallway a second later and he leans back into her cushions in satisfaction, crossing his hand behind his head as he waits for Jane to return with her gifts in tow.

“Loki-” Her face is still pink when she marches back into the living room with twelve doppelgangers of him in her wake as she sputters her shock. “This…this is insane!”

He notices immediately that she cannot keep her eyes off all of them – all of _him_ really – seeing as they are all dressed in nothing but the skimpiest pieces of fabric and accessories that barely cover the most strategic part of the male anatomy.

“Midgardians celebrate Yule for twelve days, do they not? And I distinctly recall you saying one night that you were feeling restless and in need of unusual entertainment,” he says calmly. “Consider this my…meaningful gift, Jane.”

“Well, yeah,” she admits, still wide-eyed in shock as all twelve Lokis stand before her at attention, “but this is-”

“-your chance of doing something many can only dream about,” he tells her wickedly, leaving no room for any misinterpretation of the subtext in his words. “So command them, my lady. They are yours to do as you wish for the next twelve days.”

It doesn’t take too long for her to cotton onto the idea, which is precisely one of the things he likes about Jane Foster. 


	5. Counterfeit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A drabble that hit me in the shower (damn, these ideas come at the wrong time). An imagined scene after Thor: The Dark World, so there will be spoilers here. Don’t read on if you haven’t seen the movie.

There is no grand ceremony, no grand entourage that accompanies the last warrior ship that will take to the skies in flames. Instead, there’s only divided opinion among a small, whispering, ill-at-ease crowd that only mourns Asgard’s fallen prince out of respect for their King.

His body had been retrieved by a diligent guard who sought to look at what the sandstorm hard buried, Thor tells her. And to this guard, Asgard owes him all gratitude for bringing back its fallen prince who had found his redemption in a single act of courage on the black sands of Svartalfheim.

The least they could do now, he tells her, is mourn. Again.

Jane reaches out as the ship makes its last journey down the narrow body of water that leads from the royal palace to the great waterfall, ghosting tentative fingers over the cold skin of Loki’s face as the sleeping prince passes her by. He is all sharp angles softened by the flickering light of the torches that line the walls of the ramparts, his beauty undiminished – perhaps even refined – in death. Gone is the Trickster, the vengeful deity who sought to subjugate Midgard…and the adopted boy who merely wanted to be his brother’s equal. Without the sneer that distorts his lips and the regret and rage that burn beneath those closed lids, he is the unnatural picture of a placid prince in eternal repose.

He’s beautiful, all light and no darkness. Strange how it takes his death to release these words from her mouth.

Steered by the gentle currents of the wind, the boat finally floats past her, rocking slightly in the undulating waves. Perhaps there are even tears and sobbing for an anti-hero, but she doesn’t hear or see them.

It’s Thor himself who dips the arrow in flame and aims the bow upward with a trembling hand.

_Valhalla fagnar þér, bróðir mínn_ , he whispers over the insistent roar of the wind, then releases the tension of the string to let the arrow fly.

The flaming shaft meets the languidly floating boat with the brilliance of a shooting star striking the hard surface of earth. In a shower of red and orange sparks, the funeral ship is consumed by Hela’s own breath that forces wide open the golden doors of the Valhalla she imagines.

Jane whispers her own farewell under her breath, but it seems so miniscule, so insignificant in a realm that thrives on the hyperbolic contradiction of a million stars that live when an Aesir dies.

She catches the ever-watchful eye of the All-father on her, the weight of his disapproval still a freshly mown track in her memory. If he wishes to teach her the lesson that a goat on a banquet table will never be a princess at its head, he needn’t have worried. She knows her place too well, saw it ever more clearly as the Aether ran its insidious paths through her blood – that there could be much more out there for her had she simply reached out to harness it the way Malekith did.

But there is no such distrust that lines his eyes, no open condescension now and it’s wrong, so wrong only in the way her sixth sense recognises through the prickling of the hair on her neck and on her arms.

Odin nods at her once and suddenly, her hands are filled with a spherical, shimmering ball of light that hovers and shudders in her hand, already yearning to return to the darkness of the night sky. In that infinitesimal second before she releases it upwards, she hears its faint cry of joy as it makes its way to freedom.

The All-father turns and makes his way back to the palace, his steps too sprightly and his shoulders too straight for a man who has just witnessed his second son’s last journey.

Or perhaps it’s merely an illusion, a facsimile of power that he maintains.

But there is no crowd to play to, no courtier left standing to impress.

_Unless…_

Her feet move of their own accord, deconstructing the image of Odin as an anomaly of the Aesir to be studied the way she hacks so studiously at the anomalies in Earth’s atmosphere.

Wait, Jane says before she can help herself, a mortal commanding a King.

Surprisingly he obeys that breathless imperative but he doesn’t turn around, like a mirage that glimmers with the slightest tinge of emerald and gold that is the magician’s greatest sleight of hand.

And then he’s gone, leaving her in the empty throne room with a ragged gasp torn from a throat gone dry.  

_*****_

_*Valhalla fagnar þér, bróðir mínn = loosely translates into ‘Valhalla embraces/welcomes you, brother mine.’_

_Apologies to those who recognise the language and think I’ve just butchered it. I’m using modern Icelandic instead of Old Norse (just can’t seem to find the proper translation) as its closest equivalent._


	6. Cryptogram

“Ms. Foster?”

She blinked in the glare of the whitewashed walls. Had a vigil of seven hours passed without her noticing as she downed cup after cup of coffee? Funny how time wore down the initial anxiety, leaving only a numbness that lingered in a wooden heart.

The doctor sank down into the hard plastic seat next to her in a slight whoosh of displaced air.

“We couldn’t save him. The injuries were too extensive and he lost too much blood,” he pulled down his mask as he spoke. Pausing, he pinched the bridge of his nose, hesitating, “Your fiancé is dead. I’m sorry.”

She wanted to rage, to scream and to cry at the injustice of the complicated mess. But what good did that do?

Loki was dead. In here, he was merely someone whom the doctors failed to save. And now he was just another dead body to be disposed of, another anonymous number in the databank to be obliterated at the push of a button.

She sat still in the wake of the doctor’s receding footsteps, then stood up. The photo that had been crushed tightly in her hands fell to the ground as it caught the barest flutter of the autumn wind that blew through the half-opened window of the hospital.

oOo

He woke in a panic and caused the machines that sustained him to explode into a tizzy of beeps.

In its wake, a horde of nurses and doctors followed. And then there was pain, then blessed delirium.

When he woke again, he felt no better, but his mind at least, worked for a minute without shutting down. Only this time, there was a visitor. An unexpected one.

“Does she know?” He rasped out hoarsely, forcing his drooping eyes to stay on the figure who was obstinately staring out of the window.

Finally, the man turned around, fierce and sad, with resignation on his face. “I fail to see the wisdom of this plan, Loki. But yes, Jane believes you dead.”

Mission accomplished, he thought, then capitulated to the darkness that opened its arms to him. 


	7. Like gods, to see

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What would it take for her to believe that the gods still walk amongst them?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A mish-mash of myth, language, esoteric stuff, name-porn and twenty-first century ramblings (obviously I’m still hung up on Tom Hiddleston’s appearance at Comic Con). And the timeline in the MCU Thor verse is clearly messed up here. But that’s bloody fanfic. It existed once in my head and has now taken monstrous life.

**_980 A.D.,_ ** **_Nóregr_ **

***

She is falling asleep.

This has never happened before.

Curiously, he lightly traces each dip and curve in her expressive face, enthralled by the heat from the dying embers of the cooking fire that lends a false glow to her face. In its waning orange light, her skin gleams deceptively pink, a bright and unworldly contrast against the white whirls of their breaths in the freezing winter night. But even the gentling warmth of the firelight cannot conceal the stains beneath her eyes or the yellowed sallowness of her hands and her cheeks. 

That deeply has the illness penetrated.

“Jane Foster.”

His command is accompanied with a sharp clack of bone on bone as the ivory chips fall into the crudely-fashioned bowl, startling her into wakefulness. Blinking awake, she stares uncomprehendingly at him. With a pointed look, he gestures to the ground.

She sees the _Ansuz_ rune first, the chip signifying the Allfather, then glances at the block of the reversed _Ansuz_.

The chip of the trickster.

They lay side by side, parallel, mocking images of each other.

Like so many others before her, Jane Foster’s eyes seem to only see the Allfather. Never its counterpart.

Regrettably, both chips will always fall from his hands. In that deplorable way, _Óðin_ _Alfaðir_ and he are tied, not by blood, but by bloodshed and war and violence of the realms. What irony then to find himself in the very unenviable position of being the second (adopted) son who represents Óðin’s lofty ideal of bridging two factions that will never see peace. 

And yet he will never be his brother’s equal.

He nearly shudders from the memories the runes conjure up; perhaps that is his punishment—the constant reminder of why malicious mischief will and can be his only chosen path.

Had there been there any incentive then, to remain on Ásgarðr? Miðgarðr, grafted somewhat awkwardly within Yggdrasil’s younger branches, is proving a more beguiling diversion, especially among unsuspecting villagers in search of gold and for young widows looking for prospective lovers way before their marriage beds have gone cold.

And they are effortlessly misled, to his pleasant surprise.

Yet they call him _Spámaður_ , the Seer, a mantle into which he slips so easily. In his hands, the runes foretell the presence of a particular deity’s benevolence and malevolence mixed with the grace of their fortunes coming to pass, like a bad debt they cannot ever pay.

Laughably, foolish mortal minds never see beyond the very flawed _Óðin_ _Alfaðir_ , whose name is the constant hushed, erroneous whisper that passes their lips. Stubborn aceptance of the steadfast omniscient presence and munificence of Óðin ensure that they will never know that the runes also point to him each time the Allfather’s name is seen in those chips. It’s their unquestioning veneration that makes him realise how short-sighted _Óðin_ can be in his demands for mortal man’s worhip without understanding them. That while they might never grasp the complexity of Yggdrasil’s interwoven worlds and the Norn’s brackish ways of determining fate, they would never stop trying.

Like Jane Foster’s imperfect struggle to look to the stars to find an explanation in them. To find answers apart from mortal man’s impersonal and unsympathetic gods.

Oblivious to his sullen musings, she touches the rune’s profane wisdom (or curse) with a tentative finger, her brown eyes lighting up in a way that he hasn’t ever observed in mortals.

“So what does it say, Miss Foster?”

Her name, so foreign, so hard on a tongue accustomed to the rolling, freeing sounds of the Asgardian worlds.

“The gods walk among us,” she murmurs as she meets his eyes for the first time. “That is—”

Her words slip into thin air as her eyes slide downwards, and her hesitation is as certain as the trajectories of the numerous stars that wheel above them for the last few millennia.

“That is…?” He prompts patiently, wanting to hear the words that should never issue from an uneducated girl’s mouth.

Her chin tilts and she meets his eyes again with a defiance that he finds fascinating. So out of turn with the unchanged rhythm of life in the village, so contrary to his expectations, yet not unanticipated.

“No gods walk among us. At least, not anymore.”

 _Clever girl_ , he thinks.

There is a measure of truth in her words. Óðin Alfaðir had long removed himself from the lives of the mortals when the unease in Ásgarðr required his full attention and efforts, leaving the Silvertongue to roam the realms at his own leisure. 

Where a common villager would fall to his knees in awe, Jane Foster is debating impossibility when the impossible stares her in the face. But her intuition and innate sense of numbers and rudimentary mathematical calculations please him because they hint of a time that exists beyond hers—for a commoner who should know naught more than a hard-bitten life of domestic duties.

As impressive as her mental prowess is, it would only be scoffed at and put down in a sorry place such as this.

She looks out at the sea and her body shakes even with the breath she takes. “Do you truly believe that, _spámaður_? That the gods are with us. So the runes say.”

He chooses not to answer her yet. “There are no stars tonight.”

It’s as though she does not hear him. Or maybe she chooses not to. He hears the swish of her roughly-sewn skirts as she paces the short length of the path that leads from the village to sea and imagines the sound of silk against skin.

“Another sign that the gods live but in the people’s imagination,” Jane is saying, her words occasionally muffled by the roar of the wind. He casts a glance around; it seems that nature disapproves of her emotional compulsion to loose the fetters of civilised behaviour and conversation. Presumably, that extends to speaking against the gods.

The notion is as laughable as the day Thor mistakenly hurled Mjöllnir intoIðunn’s precious harvest of apples and earned himself such censure that even the palace guards had feared for their lives.

“Where are they when the tides rise above the banks of the river and destroy the life-giving crops we need? What about the sun that hides itself behind the storms and the merciless winds that tear down our dwellings when they are still fresh in the ground?”

It doesn’t escape his notice that she fails to mention the illness that ravages her small body.

Overtaken by the sudden impulse to prove that the dead gods still live, he picks up the _Ansuz_ reversed rune and closes her fingers around it.

“Keep this.”

She gasps. Her mouth falls open in surprise and she pulls her shawl tightly around herself like a shroud. It seems to take everything in her not to drop the chip he’d laid in her small hand.

“You have given me the rune of evil.”

This time, he laughs in the crumbling face of her lingering superstition. “Such dramatics. No, my dear Jane. I have given you Loki.”

oOo

“The horses have yet to be watered.”

The flap of the door lets in a blast of spring air. Her companion stalks into the barn in a whirl of fine linen and golden hair, chattering about their newest foal. Ástríðr Hákonardóttir is uncommonly beautiful even among her people and pledged to be married to a man who will return with the long ships in the next season.

“I’ve already finished doing all that needs to be done.”

Ástríðr’s delight is plain for all to see. The sun slashes halfway down her face, turning her hair deep gold.

Jane’s own sallow skin seems even more leached of colour in comparison.

The conversation that ensues is one-sided and filled with imaginings of the fertile lands down south. Jane listens with polite nods and non-committal sounds simply to show her perceived support for Ástríðr’s coming nuptials, and lets her mind wander.

The subtlety of that rejection is thankfully lost on Ástríðr.

To think about the lands down south—the lands of her ancestry—is always a sobering experience. It also explains why her name isn’t a patronymic, like everyone else’s in the village. It isn’t pregnant with the burden of a father’s deeds that she needs to carry as part of her name, but it is an excruciating, constant reinforcement that she is accepted as far as her head is kept downwards as she works, never meeting the fierce blue eyes of the Northmen who like their women as bold and brash as them.

Now _that_ is a small victory, although it casts her even more as an outsider as the enigmatic man who seems to have the answers to the questions she thoughtlessly throws out.

Just like that, her attention drifts to the man whom she knows as the _Spámaður_ , the Seer, who skirts the corrugated edges of her dreams.

In the last lunar month, her visits with him have become alarmingly consistent. On the days of the sun, he appears on the fringe of their hamlet, a hauntingly beautiful figure in black with accents of green and gold, unlike the wrinkled and bent _Spákonar_ who hobble around the village for money and feed. He is unlike any other that she knows, even though they are supposed to be part mystical, fey folk whose see more clearly the pathways of the gods.

The _Spámaður_ talks like someone who has trodden those pathways many times, drifting through them as his whims dictate.

But what would she know?

Her knowledge of many things beyond the village is limited, her fanciful musings merely backed by observation of natural phenomena unheard by anyone but the geldings she cares for.

Still, the Seer listens with patience, which is perhaps the greatest surprise of all. Sometimes disdain crosses his pale, aquiline features at the mention of Óðin Alfaðir and his progeny, but so subtly she thinks she is imagining it all. At other times, he sparingly doles out baffling advice on the cruel world and of lands that _could not_ possibly exist in the here and now. Or what about those times when his visions seem to lead some women astray?

The glint in his eyes tells her his attempts at stirring confusion are always deliberate as he rides through the debris of people’s broken lives. So keenly manipulative is he, yet they keep coming back, just like she does, like keen chickens looking for feed.

It must be something in the water.

oOo

The pain in her limbs worsens as the midnight sun prepares to fall into hibernation beneath the horizon for the next winter.

“You just have to say his name.”

The Seer’s entry is so abrupt, so silent that Jane jumps and hits her head hard on the small, wooden beam that separates the hearth from her sleeping space. She glares at the impassive innocence that he fashions over his face.

Belatedly, she realises she is tightly clutching the reversed Ansuz rune in her fist. She is holding… _Loki._

The trickster’s magic seems to imbue the place whenever her _Spámaður_ is near. Is that where he draws his energy from?

“There are many things I could do for you, my dear Jane,” he shakes his head in apparent amusement as he circles her slowly. “But if only you believed.”

The Seer ignites petulant boldness in her like no other, lending her a braveness that slides into recklessness—such impossible traits of human nature she can never ever hope to possess again. It’s testament to that appalling talent of his of drawing those sides out of her that she manages to throw this rudeness back in his face when he slides so absurdly comfortably into the routine of her day.

Jane looks at him in aggravation. “Why would I call his name? To give truth to the belief that the gods are responsible for the ills of the groaning world? And to call this name in particular? Utter madness.”

Indifference is written on his face. “A harsh observation.”

“But a necessary one,” she counters.

She ignores the pointed look he gives her and waves an arm in an expansive circle. “Our treatises inevitably return to this, doesn’t it? Let the gods slip into the memories of people, _Sp_ _ámaður_.I can assure you they’ll be happier this way.”

“What would the world be, Jane Foster, when there are no gods to whom you can ascribe blame or praise?”

“A godless one.”

He acknowledges her play on words with a small smirk and corrects her, “A colourless one.”

She swallows bitterness along with blood. “I’m dying, _Sp_ _ámaður._ You must have known that from the very beginning.”

Taking in the grim line of his lips, she continues softly, “There is so much blood. More than ever, in the mornings. I will not even live to see to day Ástríðr’s betrothed returns.”

His hands are suddenly around her shoulders, an unspoken urgency that he tries to convey through action alone. The cynical amusement in his face is replaced by an intense moment of seriousness.

“Just say that name.”

It shocks her into a whisper. “Why?”

“Give voice to them,” he tells her. “Do it if you want to live.”

Jane digs deep for an optimism that had long been buried in the bogs somewhere down south, deep beneath the earth with parents whose broken skulls have surely turned to slush by now. What harm would that do indeed?

Stuck in her dry throat, the trickster’s name emerges as a sound that’s somewhere between a croak and a whimper. 

A majestic bird appears on her _Sp_ _ámaður_ ’s forearm without warning. The winged creature takes flight and screeches its hunting call as it arcs through the air and vanishes down the horizon of the roiling sea.

He nods once, thoughtfully, then speaks softly in a language she thinks she can understand, but can’t.

Looking at him is suddenly painful, akin to the act of beholding the beauty of a star, distant and bright and untouchable. Punishing and indomitable. With unfathomable darkness collapsing into itself.

oOo

The halls of _Ásgarður_ are quiet and unchanged. It wrenches a humourless laugh from him.

 _This_ life is unchanged, while a woman—insignificant as she is as far as the whole of humankind is concerned—carefully rations out her last breaths as she does her water and food.

That self-banishment down Yggdrasil´s thick branch into the realm of Miðgarðr is more than a rebellion as it is a desperate claim for him to reconstruct an identity in which he can sit comfortably. It had ended up as a learning journey of greater proportions than he could have ever expected.

In various guises, he still visits her as the days slowly pass, laughing internally at her bewilderment at the sea of unfamiliar faces that suddenly graze her bedside, doling out platitude after platitude until she tires her own intellect out.

But the _Sp_ _ámaður_ is him at his most comfortable, the closest he can be to the force of flux that he is. Jane’s easy acceptance (without any mockery) of his mixed nature gives him a rush of victory he doesn’t want to think about.

“I had hoped for your return much sooner.” 

His mother perches at the edge of his bed. Or at least the woman whom he’d come to think of as his mother.

Loki opts for formality in the face of uncertainty. “Forgive me, Mother. There has been much to do.”

Frigga nods sagely. The air fizzles and warps gently around her; instead of her face he sees the sharp beak of a falcon and its brown feathers.

“Is it not why you summoned me?”

“An act of desperation, believe me.”

A ghost of a smile touches her lips. “This mortal child. She matters to you.”

He doesn’t want to think of the interlocking weaves in her sewing and the visions of the future that she proclaims will come to past, even though that stupid gift seems to exist (at least some measure of it) in him as well.

“She is dying.”

“When your father and I revealed the truth of your parentage, this was a consequence I had not foreseen.”

He scoffs. “You had not anticipated her unbelief that renders us ineffectual?”

The sadness in her eyes tells him more than he wants to know. “So perceptive, save for the things that matter. It is more than that and you know it, Loki.”

The small box appears next to him. Dread and awe are simultaneous emotions weighing him down. Dare he think that—?

“Persuade her, Loki.”

oOo

The _Sp_ _ámaður_ is different today, as coiled and tense as a serpent about to strike. If he had come to say goodbye, Jane reckons that he is here not a moment too soon.

His green gaze is penetrating, electric, holding her captive and unmoving. A golden, shiny object is nestled elegantly in his hand, snug in the indent of his palm.

But he is looking heavenward, as though he is searching the thickening clouds for something. His distraction offers her the opportunity to study that small object that is possibly worth the riches of the lands down south and more. It must be weightier than it looks, carved of the purest distillation of precious metals.

Automatically, she is reaching for that strange thing, wanting to feel its round smoothness in her trembling fingers or how it seems to emit a strange source of light in itself.

In a fluid move, the Seer steps out of her reach. “There is a world beyond the sea, Jane. And many worlds, farther, beyond that. But I would ask you to choose now.”

Before she knows what is happening, before she can even question him about those mysterious worlds beyond the sea, a collection of runic chips falls onto the floor.

She bends over slowly, examining how they lay. He’d taught her the fundamental art of reading their positions and their meanings, but today, it feels as though she is standing on the cusp of something greater.

The _Hagalaz_ lies at an angle to the reversed _Perthro_ , which in turn is partially covered by the _Algiz_. Forces of destruction and uncertainty, a maelstrom of confusion that looms in the seasons ahead. A possible protective shield might come in the midst of tumultuous change.

In the centre, the _Ansuz_ rune stands on its own, its balancing counterpoint missing. For as long as she has known the Seer, the _Ansuz_ had never fallen without its reverse, its polarity.

If the _Ansuz_ is _Óðin_...its opposite is...is...

Cognizance is as much as an intellectual resurrection that is hindered only by the restraints of her ailing body. The revelation is a non-riddle that would have been so blindingly obvious if not for the persistent blindness she’d carted around like a burdensome prize.

The answer had lain in her hand the day he’d placed it there, when he’d left his identity with her.

_Her Spámaður_ _…the trickster…they are one and the same._

That knowledge is somehow…beautiful. Fitting.

Looking up, Jane sees barely-concealed triumph glinting in his bright eyes as he holds out the fruit. She doesn’t dare to touch it anymore. Is it possible that it looks more out of reach now than it had ever been?

He looks down at her knowingly. “The only caveat, my dear Jane, is that you will also be mine.”

If it is impulsive resolve that makes her grab at his wrist with both hands, then it could only be a foolhardy death wish that makes her lick a path from his fingers to the curve of the luscious fruit. The raw sensuality of the sinuous act steals both their breaths from them.

His hoarse whisper floats to her ears. “Now bite.”

She does.

Her teeth touch, then break the delicate skin of the ambrosial fruit (surely nothing in this dwelling rivals its glorious taste) and her eyes involuntarily squeeze shut when its sweetness coats her impoverished lips.

The outside world spins out of focus as the earthy thaw of the winter dissolves into the green and gold of spring. Jane feels her body strangely loosening, filled with the pulsing fire of the stars. The energy that hums through her veins is surely more than blood, like light eating her flesh from the inside out. She pitches forward, flailing for stable ground, but the shocking immediacy of the sensation denies her even that basic, human instinct of keeping upright.

Down on her knees in the mud, she smells the resin of magic and leather that she has unknowingly come to associate with her Seer.

In her newfound strength, the chip of the reversed Ansuz shatters into powder. Shocked and dismayed, she tries to save the only thing that had shrunk the universe into a grain of sand and given meaning to every harsh winter night since she’d taken ill.

Dimly, she hears Loki calling her name. Even his voice seems different, timbered and smoothed out with otherworldly beauty—had it all lain in the fruit’s power, or was the deficiency only in her?

The heady tide of sensation finally recedes, allowing her to look at him with new eyes. It comes so much more easily now that the pain that had plagued her limbs and her chest is gone.

He hauls her upwards roughly as his lips meet hers hard. Her laughter amidst their kisses is still a broken litany of regret and joy.

Finally, he speaks.

“Now, say _my_ name.”

 

_\- Fin_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Spámaður – Seer (masculine), Spákonar – the feminine plural form
> 
> 2\. In this story, the Ansuz or the Óss rune that Jane sees speaks of reason and language and is used in runic divination. Its reverse, the Merkstave Ansuz Rune, is its opposite, diving that all thoughts are broken, and words between men cannot be understood in any words but those of the trickster – Loki, who is seen as Odin’s opposite or Other.
> 
> Obviously I don’t know anything about runic fortune telling and everything is pretty much made up here except for the names and what they symbolise. For those who do, pardon my ignorance.
> 
> 3\. The day of the sun = Sunnudagr/Sunday


	8. This is the life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The call of the Aether is too strong. For her, for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for #LokaneDecktheHalls on Tumblr. For innermostplanet, who asked for fork-in-the-road AUs, missing scenes, dark fic, humour, drabbles, canon-flavoured stories, introspection, psychodrama, action, dub-con, crack. Hopefully this gives you a little of everything.

The world, as they’d known back then, was ending.

That dawning realisation had jerked her awake.

Jane Foster couldn’t ever remember a time when she has ever awoken with a sweat-drenched torso and a heart that threatened to beat out of her ribcage.

But as exceptionally vivid as the nightmare had been, this one hadn’t faded or diminished into the murky depths of her buried subconscious as the sky lightened from cobalt to the brilliant orange pink of the coming day.

Instead, with the clarity of a movie reel on constant playback, she somehow knew the sequence of events during that pivotal point in the Asgard-Svartalfheim war, how Malekith betrayed his own kin, how the Aether was buried deep. Knew what had really happened as intimately as the back of her own hand.

oOo

The floodgates had been wrenched open by that one disturbing dream.

That facsimile of history that Malekith had aimed to replicate a month ago as the worlds converged again?

Somehow it has burrowed its way into her, dug its claws deep. It owns her now.

That particular brand of history is on permanent replay in her head as soon as her head touches her pillow as the movie in her mind forces her to relive the memories from the _defeated_ side—god-awful memories that haven’t been embellished by Odin’s glib recounting of Asgard’s victory over the Dark Elves.

Suddenly, she shares that shadowed connection with the Dark Elves as they fought Bor, stumbled with them as they stumbled through the portals back to Svartalfheim during the last convergence. Their collective memories become hers, braided into the threads of her own mundane routines and structures, almost a month after she’d been given a welcome/goodbye/see-you-soon kiss by Thor on the rooftop (that could mean anything by Asgardian standards but they’re the least of her worries right now).

Jane wakes up sweating like a pig, still feeling the ghosts of their memories nipping painfully at her drying skin.

It’s times like these that she’s thankful for the field of study she’d chosen—the academic, mathematical study of the stars rather than the minefield that’s the human psyche—because she doesn’t think it’d do any good to look into her own subconscious right here, right now.

Freud would have a field day. So would Jung. Hell, she’d read herself the riot act if she could after declaring herself as an official victim of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder.

Give it a medical name and it can be treated.

If only she could convince herself that it is really, simply, only _just_ a bad dream and nothing more.

oOo

Peripherally, Jane registers the soft clunks of asymmetric footfalls. Somehow she’s able to match them to their voices, even though they are low and indistinct through the glass and wood of the door, interspersed with the irritating and intermittent groans of the drill and hammer.

Her laptop chirps softly, indicating a positive result that she has been waiting for, but all it does is make her tense and jump skittishly.

The longer the renovations go on, the less her calculations make sense.

Why the hell did their new team member demand a fully-furnished office with all the amenities a safe house could ever need? More importantly, why the hell did the damn management actually agree to his demands?

Her headache is worsening with each knock of wood on wood and she wonders if she would, by the end of the day, be scraping her own remains off the floor along with the remains of her new colleague.

Or maybe it’s better to turn her ire on the poor, unsuspecting workers whose only crime was to hold a damned drill and a sander at eight in the morning.

She is thinking only hypothetically of course. A prolonged lack of sleep over a few weeks is making her cranky. That fantasy of ruining their hard work by doing them bodily harm is her only consolation prize, although it would not have been the worst that she’d ever thought of—

“Dr. Foster?”

Her answering grunt is loud in the sudden silence.

The new intern cringes in response. (Is it too late to be more appreciative of Darcy?)  

“There will be a staff lunch tomorrow for our new colleague at 1 p.m. at the Regent Hotel—”

The crash of her coffee cup against the wall is a welcome sound, the spreading brown stain against the white carpet a satisfying sight, just as the lights go out everywhere.

oOo

The man who strides in carries confidence in such abundance that all the women in the workplace flock to him like flies to a garbage dump. Plainly ignoring them, he turns to her and introduces himself as Lukas.

Strangely, she sees his eyes widen in abject astonishment as she gamely returns his greeting. She’s familiar enough with the pull of attraction—that inexplicable sensation of freewheeling, the fluttery knowing of reciprocal sexual allure, one part uncertainty, another part desire.

This is that and so much more.

Her own mind races into overdrive when she takes his proffered hand.

No, _no_ please.

The sudden flash of awareness makes her jerk at his hand clumsily and it takes all the muscular discipline she has not to keel over in shock.

His _thoughts_ are almost open to her, in a stream-of-consciousness manner that doesn’t make any sense.

Is the opposite also true? Had he felt that same connection?

Jane tries to convince herself that the spark she feels from their brisk handshake and his intense green stare originates in the fertile soil of her imagination. It is merely fanciful sentiment, the natural aftermath of a successful session interpreting data that allows her to string a story of the stars together.

oOo

Darcy Lewis bursts into the room with grimace.

“Oh my god, Jane. It’s like the Arctic in here. I mean, yeah, it’s hot outside, but this is just…overcompensation, you know?”

Is it?

She thinks that the heat is… _fucking_ unbearable. She’d shed her favourite flannel shirt as soon as the sun came up, removed her red wellies and rolled up her jeans as far as they can go. Even the glare from the mid-day sun is burning a permanent imprint onto her retinas.

“It’s too hot in here,” Jane snaps irritably, then tries to ignore the fact that the temperature is recording a new low for New York.

Or are they still in London? All she sees sometimes is the black sands of Svartalfheim superimposed over the skyscrapers.

Darcy looks at her oddly, shrugs and shuffles around to her side of the desk, giving a cursory glance at her laptop screen.

“Still calculating the pressure and mass of that…thingy you’ve been trying to do for the last two weeks?”

“Actually, it’s called the warping of space time and the energy output needed for a man-made warp drive,” Jane corrects absently. “And it’s only been a week that I’ve been trying to-”

The sage nod of her intern comes before she even manages to finish her sentence.

“This is the post-Thor depression again, isn’t it? The reason why you’re just doing work and more work?”

“Nope,” she denies it flatly. “It isn’t.”

“That’s denial, Jane,” Darcy counters patiently, “Lucky for you, I’ve the perfect solution.”

She snorts in laughter. “Let me guess. Would that be getting laid? Drunk? Or both?”

Darcy’s beaming smile is bright enough to power their backup generator. “Exactly!”

Jane doesn’t answer, content to let Darcy prattle on about her romantic hangover cures.

She rubs at the delicate skin on the underside of her arm, trying to decipher the entity’s sinuous rhythm, its fatal heartbeat. That thing that hums and whispers through her veins, that wispy red vapour that made her blood sing?

She has had an inkling of an idea what _that_ really is. To say that she had been worried is an understatement. The sudden urge to scream and rail at something—at anything—overcomes her, but then some form of common sense prevails. The last thing she needs is a visit to the mental ward; Erik Selvig’s stay in the mental institution is not an experience she desires to undergo herself.

With a start, Jane realises that Darcy, in typically fine form, is already moving on to the latest gossip topic: Lukas. She takes a deep breath and smiles (it comes out more like a scowl, but thankfully Darcy doesn’t notice) and tries to listen to his—undoubtedly—grossly exaggerated attributes.

oOo

He leans his hips against the corner of her desk and simply waits for her to finish all that she needs to do.

Admittedly, it takes little cajoling for her to look up at him; his sheer presence is probably that magnetic and compelling.

Not that Jane’s really into the science and chemistry of attraction. But how and why had it taken her so long to realise that Lukas is as good-looking and mysteriously as they say he is?

Up until now, she knows nothing about him (except that he is working on some other theoretical aspects of making a man-made Einstein-Rosen bridge), save for the second-hand information that had filtered through the grapevine, all of which is mostly useless and has mainly to do with his body parts.

“I would ask you to dinner, Dr. Foster.”

Such an odd way of asking. A statement, not a request. Almost hypothetical.

She doesn’t really know how to respond. It must be the trick of the light when she sees his irises glow green and gold. Or maybe even red.

Somehow she agrees to Lukas’s not-quite request. In a more direct manner, of course.

oOo

They do this often now, even going as far as to develop a code for a night out together.

She’ll don a silk dress (her wardrobe is going to be severely depleted if they’re to carry on this way) and he is as always, impeccable in a dark suit and a tie. The conversation will revolve around work and not much else.

Perhaps he simply reminds her of a so-called celestial relationship with a Norse god that ended in London before it really began in the hot sands of Puente Antiguo.

Sometimes there is hurried fumbling and heavy breathing against the thin walls of her apartment; at other times, they are fully clothed when his talented fingers do exactly what she needs him to do.

She tries to reciprocate with her mouth and her hands, but suspects she’ll never quite be as polished as him.

They never, ever make it to bed.

Darcy calls this the classic rebound case study that all couples ought to memorise. And so does Lukas, who actually finds rebound sex as appealing as her silk dress that he always rips open.

It doesn’t escape her notice that the dress is always magically repaired and in pristine condition by the time their dalliance is over.

oOo

It all changes one evening, when Jane’s mood goes from bad to worse when Murphy’s Law suddenly finds a very practical application in her life.

It isn’t by accident that the lights go out as her agitation spikes over a failed calculation. There’ve been too many of late, too many slips-ups that shouldn’t be simply attributed to a post-Thor depression (isn’t that what Lukas the rebound is for?).

She’s probably getting unforgivably sloppy.

But the backup power generator doesn’t kick in with the correct voltage, compounding the problem that’s fast turning into a mountain instead of remaining a molehill.

A part of the lab is burnt to cinders. She isn’t exactly hurt when the explosion happens; her feet move with unnatural speed towards safety, yet her eyes track the person she perceives to be responsible for the power failure.

All she remembers is the unaccountable, cleansing sensation of rage and the screeching sound of metal against metal followed by blackness.

Jane wakes up with Lukas hovering over her.

In his face, she sees Loki. It dawns on her there and then, why it is that they have the connection they have, how the Aether (or at least, the remnants of the Aether in her blood) had linked them together somehow.

He’s clutching her arm, muttering a series of phrases in an incomprehensible language and tastes like mercy and salvation.

Gradually, she’s cocooned in warmth as she drops back into blissful oblivion.

Later, she is told that Wade Tonby, the site’s electrician, was found burnt to the crisp in the lab.

How he had managed to find himself plastered to the overloading circuit when he was actually too far away to have made that walk across the compound in time to get fried is a mystery the authorities would never be able to solve.

oOo

They make it to bed today.

Loki’s movements are choppy, missing the elegant suaveness that he carries as part of his carefully-honed persona.

She needs no silk dress this time, no knot for him to unravel. The Aether is all the clothing she needs, its soothing caress more intimate than any fabric or any man’s hands.

With his fingers twined tightly in hers, they drift, his hips a relentless dance against hers, her tongue curling boldly in his mouth. He tears through her with precision, pounding, pushing, claiming, just as the Aether claims both of them, fuelling the desperation and want.

His only reward is the blood red streaks along the smooth bone whiteness of his back on which her short nails manage to score.

So this is oneness, in its fearsome, awe-inspiring glory, born out of the fuzzy logic of an element that had existed long before even the realms took shape. Two fundamentally different beings rendered indistinct by the triumphant roar of the Aether’s uniting power.

She wants _more, more,_ and _more._

oOo

Theoretically, the idea of an invasive foreign body—or rather, an ancient substance that exists when myths were still reality—is as exciting as the unravelling of the biggest mysteries of the universe on pen and paper, distilled as comprehensible, bite-sized equations that explain the monumental.

Experientially, the violation of her body is that much of a destructive disease that could only lead to a gruesome end.

If Malekith himself had struggled to hold it, what hope did she have, as a mere human being?

oOo

In the aftermath of sex, Loki likes to trace the veins in her forearms. They’re redder now, like liquefied jewels that speed through the freeways of her body.

“It consumes you. You think it protects you. To an extent, it does,” he notes quietly. “Until you see what you want and do what you want. Except that it isn’t what you truly desire.”

Jane tries to adopt a matter-of-fact tone. “It’ll kill me.”

“I’d always suspected that the Aether would never give up a host. You, my dear Jane, proved me correct.”

She doesn’t begrudge him the fascination that she hears in his voice. Being a mortal host is as much as a novelty for him as it is for her; as a scientist, she thinks she can remain detached enough to study its effects on her as long as Loki’s by her side.

“What does it feel like?”

There is genuine curiosity in the question, like he doesn’t really remember the time when he held the Tesseract in his power all that well.

Jane considers his question carefully, trying to articulate the buzzing sensation in her body. How does one talk about a monstrosity that is both damning and beautiful at the same time?

“Physically, it’s like running a temperature constantly. Having that alternating chill and flashes of heat when you feel feverish. Mentally, I don’t…really know,” she tells him haltingly. “Let’s just say that it seems to…fracture all your preconceived ideas of yourself. You start to wonder who you really are and who you can actually become.”

“Its hold is powerful and compelling,” he acknowledges with a slow nod. “Like the Tesseract, the Aether has infinite power.”

So much is implied in that. With Loki, she has gotten quite adept at reading between the lines.

“And we both know what that means, don’t we?”

His hesitation speaks volumes. “Yes.”

She likes that he doesn’t bother with platitudes, or to say that he’ll help her. He’d already done it once in the dark heartlands of Svartalfheim. He’ll do it again, no matter the cost.

Not for humankind, of course; maybe not even for her.

oOo

Which is how she finds one of his knives embedded deep in her abdomen after their dinner date one evening.

Loki is once again kneeling over her; this time she’s cut apart to let her blood— _her_ Aether—flow out.

They are no longer in the fancy restaurant with an unpronounceable French name.

Jane strains her neck to look around. It seems appropriate that they’re back in that desolate landscape of her nightmares. How he’d managed to rip open a portal while they were out at dinner is beyond her; even more remarkable is the fact that he’d done it without her being cognizant of it all.

Now there is only red on black, two dark colours that blend seamlessly together as the Aether slinks unwillingly back to its resting place. Nothing much has changed since antiquity in this godforsaken place where only remnants of broken warships give voice to all that had been lost.

Will he bury her at the site where the Aether had first taken her? Or will he bring her back to earth when all’s been said and done?

She doesn’t bother anymore with looking at the ground, at the macabre sight. She’s already tried it once, only to have her chin gently tilted back to meet his eyes.

_Look at me_ , he’d said, lacing his fingers through hers. _Only at me._

There is no joy in his face, no pain showing on hers.

Maybe there’s even the hint of despair that she thinks she sees as he whispers her name in farewell. For that, she’s grateful.

That much is enough.

-Fin


	9. C. Interruptus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It’s a truth not quite universally acknowledged that making a sex tape and getting it to go viral for a few seconds of world fame is the ultimate destiny of couplehood. 
> 
> Explicit. Very, very adult. Kiddies, just…go away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got tired of angst and darkfic. So filthy crack it is. Sometimes I think I do this just to prove to myself I still have a sense of humour. Happy New Year to the Lokaners on Tumblr, whom I blame for this. I had a hysterical time writing this and I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I do.

**Cariebishop: being perfectionists they** **keep making sex tapes until they are satisfied with the result.**

**Gabbiki: imagine if they finally get it right and feel proud with themselves only to find out that the camera has run out of tape/battery.**

**Annoyinglywiselover** **:** **only for it to land in the hands of Stark, and soon you have the Avengers lounging in their tower, eating popcorn with Thor groaning in the background, watching ol’ Reindeer Games and Doctor Foster in action.**

* * *

  _0930, Monday_

“Oooh…oooooohh…yyyeee—”

Her moans are piercing his eardrums. They’re just the wrong side of the A-major scale (his ear, after a few months of listening to Brahms and Bach, is _that_ attuned to music) and a touch asthmatic.

He stops thrusting and grits his teeth with the unwelcome sensation of sliding fully out of her warm sheath. Like magic, her moans stop as a look of confusion and frustration (and latent desire, of course) cloud her face.  

“Why did you stop?”

He sighs, but finds that he can be patient with this, with her. Of course, the multiple couplings per day do not hurt anyone and along the way, he’d found out in the greatest way that her sex drive is as malleable as bendable metal.

It was _his_ idea after all. Loosely speaking, especially when it’d involved cleaning out her cupboard of precious notes and vanishing them into his pocket dimension until Jane had finally, finally boarded the love boat of carnal desires after succumbing beautifully to that easy form of blackmail. Except that sailing (or should he say, riding) into their sunset of depraved pleasures hadn’t been as smooth and lubricated as cogs in the wheel as he’d hoped.

They’re in doggie style right now, with her hunched over the love seat (how appropriate) with her arse pointed in the air, wet and slick with hours of hard work. As much as he adores this position, he straightens and goes to the video camera idling away at the corner of the room.

A quick push of the button and the camera replays the footage of the last ten minutes.

French kissing…fellatio…cunnilingus…all in their pre-requisite order.

Even their backdrop is beautiful. They’d taken the trouble to deck Jane’s apartment in resplendent red silk drapes, and with dim lighting surrounding the furniture, the room is as crisp and luscious as a _fin-de-Siècle_ Parisian boudoir.

Hadn’t classier adult videos followed this formula to great acclaim?

Still. It makes him frown.

Quite the opposite of being aroused and ready to go, he’s on the verge of getting limp watching both him and Jane go at it like rabbits. Their pre-coupling resembles at best, a demented samba on a dreary, rainy wedding day and gives absolutely no indication how they truly scorch the bed sheets when no one is watching.

They are as stiff as hell (no pun intended) if the nervous manner in which they eyeball the tiny camera lens is anything to go by.

“Loki?”

“I thought that was a rather poor imitation of Jenna Jameson,” Loki tells her calmly.

Jane scowls indignantly back at him, arousal apparently forgotten. Such a pity.

“I did my research. There were tons of videos on _youporn_ that I watched of her, even read her autobiography—”

He shushes her with a finger on her red, red lips and points at the replay. “Just watch.”

She gives him another glare and turns reluctantly to the screen. They both see his tongue flicking quickly over her bits and then her returning the favour, all of which happens to some measure of success. Her moans are especially deafening and his attempts at employing appropriately-timed dirty talk don’t even register on the audio feed.

Her grimace soon mirrors his.

“Ugh. That was…”

“-intolerable.”

“-bad.”

“I had no idea we looked so…”

“-pusillanimous?”

“Actually, I was just going to say ‘awkward’.”

“It could be the angle of the recording device, seeing as it only points at your puss—”

“Ah…that!”

She interrupts him loudly for the sake of interrupting him, the blush still staining her cheeks a deep rose red. It’s funny how her inhibitions could never really be shed cleanly even after they’ve done everything six ways to Sunday on every piece of furniture that supports coitus.

Loki takes a little more pity on her. She is beguiling (for a mortal who studies the stars) after all, and he cannot help but concede how exiled life on Midgard has suddenly become a few notches more entertaining upon the realisation that sex is truly not the closeted affair he’d assumed it was, given the latest wonder called the Internet and online video streaming.

The inventiveness of mortals knows no bounds, it seems, rivalling even the bawdiest of tales that circulate in Asgard’s kitchens and galleys.

Loki finds himself beyond thrilled at this discovery.

Now that Jane is fully on board, it’s time to inform her that it will take many tries, many takes before they produce the perfect sex tape.

He tells her that, verbatim.

To his mild shock, she agrees.

He loves that they are both perfectionists where it matters.

“We should do it again.”

Her determination will win worlds over and he’s never felt prouder.

“And again and again,” he echoes solemnly.

oOo

_0400, Tuesday_

“Perhaps this will help you relax a little more.”

Loki holds up a can of whipped cream and a bowl of strawberries.

Jane brightens immediately.

The cream ends up a little more south than it needs to end up and while his talented tongue takes care of it, they run out of food before she can reach a satisfactory orgasm.

“I knew I should have bought five more cans of this.”

“We still have the strawberries.”

He doesn’t wait for her response but slides a cut fruit in between her moist lips. Following the trail of juice down her neck, he tastes the berries’ tangy aroma and her musky perspiration, pacing his ministrations as the tape rolls on merrily.

oOo

_0630, Tuesday_

“It doesn’t look too bad,” he ventures tentatively. “Except for here-”, he freezes the frame and points out the part where her knee is obscuring the wondrous work of his moving hips. “-and here.”

“Can’t we just…I dunno, cut that out of the film?”

He tosses her a sceptical look. “And go straight from cunnilingus to my orgasm? I fail to see the continuity here. Unless we have both conveniently swapped body parts without us knowing at some point in the making of the video.”

Her shoulders slump at his mildly ironic comeback. “I suppose you’re right.”

“We could try again.”

oOo

_0700, Tuesday_

They are still strawberry-stained, naked and heaving from their exertions on the floor.

This time, it’s Jane who points out another unforgiveable fault.

“We also forgot to switch positions.”

Loki double-checks the running time and the sort-of screenplay they’d developed together.

Fellatio…cunnilingus…and then the blessed coitus part. From missionary to doggie to cowgirl and maybe back to a deviation of a missionary position, if Jane hadn’t yet collapsed from the cramps that tended to develop while she was in those _fuck-me_ stilettos. Except that they’d gone straight to cowgirl and she’d ridden him so hard that they’d both forgotten just how much of an endurance race making a sex tape really is.

“I think I have a new respect for these people working in San Fernando Valley,” she tells him ruefully.

oOo

_1100, Tuesday_

The object is bright purple, phallic and quite possibly, a distant competitor, as inanimate as it is, but he will never understand how women would prefer what Jane calls ‘jelly rubber’ to warm, velvet male hardness.

Loki eyes it cautiously. It shouldn’t be an affront to his…virility and godhood, but it is apparently a constant feature in such videos and so he had agreed to purchase one with Jane’s credit card.

Delivery is as rushed and clumsy as a failed bank robbery and he’d simply returned the delivery man’s smug look with as much Asgardian superiority as he could muster, not that it’d made very much difference when he was holding a weighty box of sex-enhancing objects in his hand.

Jane holds it up to him then flicks a switch.

The buzzing puzzles him.

“They call this a dildo. Or a vibrator.”

He touches a finger to its vibrating tip and snatches it out of her hand. Hurrying over to the camera (it’s now a permanent fixture in the room), he starts the tape rolling.

“I have an idea,” he tells her wickedly. “Now bend backwards.”

oOo

She screams his name, her fingers digging deep into his hair as he rides her, and he’s pleased that that her Jenna Jameson type moaning has long been left by the wayside a few takes ago.

But Loki isn’t too pleased to learn that Jane had needed the aid of the vibrator to get where she normally gets to with only his fingers and tongue.

Once they’re both hoarse and sated, he gets up and stops the recording.

“This isn’t working.”

Her eyes are still slumberous and her movements sluggish. Signs of a woman well and truly satisfied. “What? Why?”

“I would prefer the removal of foreign objects from the video,” he tells her huffily. Surely he is allowed to change his mind about the necessities of toys during coitus.

“I like it,” she protests. “And no offence, Loki, but sometimes, a girl just needs a little more pushing. The dildo does that work for her.”

He grins widely. “I am named Silvertongue for very _justifiable_ reasons.”

oOo

Loki proves it thoroughly. So thoroughly in fact, that they mutually decide on the spot that it is the only section of the tape worth keeping.

oOo

_1400, Tuesday_

“I think I need coffee.”

“I think we need more cameras.”

“We require more cream.”

“And strawberries.”

“And more caramel-flavoured lubrication.”

“I prefer the one with the scent of jasmine flowers.”

“We could try both. No dildos?”

“No dildos.”

oOo

_1430, Tuesday_

What begins as an accidental spill of coffee on the carpet leads to a desperate twirl into the shower stall, where his wandering hands spread her legs wide. 

Hitching a slender leg up his shoulder, he takes a moment to savour the visual feast before propping her against the shower stall.

Then his fingers stroke. Soft, then hard, circling relentlessly until she begs him to finish fast. Instead, he prolongs the sensual torture and conjures additional streams of water to rush over her erogenous zones, edging her towards the inevitable cliff, stopping deliberately when she pants his name.

He’ll only allow her to shudder and quake when his smiling mouth brings her to the peak of her pleasure.

“Please.”

That much is his undoing.

Her legs lock around his waist as he glides deep and drives them to that foregone conclusion.

oOo

_1530, Tuesday_

“Dammit, why didn’t we get that on tape?”

oOo

_1600, Tuesday_

Apparently, gods have limits too.

“I’ve never, ever been naked for over twenty-four hours. Ever. Then again, I’ve never done a sex marathon in my life.”

“To live for pleasure should be mortal man’s greatest ambition,” Loki muses sleepily, watching Jane literally crawl to the bed and reach for the nearest pillow. He does not even have the strength to perform a quick cleaning spell over them before joining her.

oOo

_2000, Tuesday_

“Chinese takeout.”

“Prolonged coitus does have a wonderful effect on appetite.”

oOo

_0500, Wednesday_

They wake, still tangled together, in the same position they fell asleep last night, with the sheets still artfully curled around their calves and waists. Her small hand is already inching towards his hips and he is already dragging her head down to take her lips in a kiss that pulls her out of the remnants of sleep.

There are no more preliminaries to be bothered with. The past forty-eight hours of marathon sex have rendered clothing an obsolete entity; where there once would have been a nightshirt and a pair of boy shorts to rip apart, Loki finds the lack of barrier to bare skin immensely gratifying.

Thankfully, Jane still has the presence of mind to bolt to the camera to start the recording before things really get hot and heavy.

This time they ignore the angles, lighting and positions when his lips meet her bare shoulder and drift downwards. His tongue, pointed and stiffened, delves inside her, drawing a sharp gasp, then softens as he guides her through the aftershocks. Soon after, she reciprocates, drawing a similar reaction from him.

With just as much wetness.

Every action reverberates with longing, with urgency, with that elusive emotion that they’d both forgotten had always defined them—momentarily lost when they were absorbed in the technicalities of that damn video.

They emerge dazed, throbbing and limp.

oOo

_0600, Wednesday_

“We might just have our prize, Jane.”

oOo

0610, Wednesday

Her fatigued grumble is loud in the sudden silence.

“I’ll go check the recording.”

oOo

_0630, Wednesday_

“Shit! I can’t believe we ran out of hard drive space!”

oOo

_0700, Wednesday_

“Maybe we should procure the services of a professional video crew. Cinematography, editing, and the full works.”

“Are you kidding me?!”

oOo

_0800, Thursday_

“Why is there a film crew in my backyard?”

“Miss Lewis had kindly acquiesced to our request and called the best private firm renowned for discreet but excellent direction.”

“Weren’t you paying attention at all to what I said yesterday?”

oOo

_2030, Saturday_

“Loki, tell me you didn’t just _upload_ the video?!”

_Oh, by adding insult to injury…_

“I would never short change us, Jane.”

She’s still staring incredulously at the video. It is all done up with polished editing, incredible cinematography with some elevator jazz in the background, her moans and his grunts tuned sensually lower than the music.

“Why…why it is online then?”

“I sold it to a very reputable company in the adult industry after consulting Miss Lewis on our options.”

“You…you showed it to Darcy?!”

He feels this need to reassure her, even though he’s still bewildered by her near puritanical attitude towards this very enjoyable activity.

“As well as to a few authorities on sex tapes. They all thought that it would be an instant success among discerning audiences.”

Her exclamation comes out as a croak. “Discerning…? Oh god.”

Loki gestures impatiently to her laptop’s screen, watching onscreen-Loki writhe in ecstasy with onscreen-Jane. The transitions between sexual positions are like clockwork and they look, as popular culture puts it, like “a million bucks”. Worthy of those tiny gold statues that they annually hand out to Midgard’s actors, really.

“As they predicted, it is an instant success. We have much to be proud of.”

“…”

“My dear Jane, you are thirty thousand dollars richer for it.”

“…”

“Hadn’t you mentioned that your research had always been left wanting in funds?”

There’s growing panic on her face. “Yeah, but I didn’t think we’d raise money this way! What if everyone I know sees this? I’ll never, ever be credible anymore, not to mention—”

He interrupts her gently. “I have observed 50,000 likes in twenty minutes.”

Her jaw is still unhinged. “That’s…that’s actually unbelievable. That’s actually more than grumpy cat’s meme hits.”

Loki leans back in the swivel chair.

The sweetness of success.

oOo

_Addendum: 2030, Saturday, Stark Towers_

“This had better be good, Stark,” Clint Barton warns.

“Trust me, it is.”

With a bowl of popcorn delicately balanced on one knee, Natasha Romanov leans forward and glares impatiently at the blank (but impressively large) screen.

“What is the urgency of the matter that you saw fit to summon us from all corners of the realms?”

“Thor, believe me when I say this is worth the gathering.”

The lithe figure sweeps into the lounge with more drinks and a larger bucket of popcorn. “He wouldn’t tell me either, if that’s any consolation. Just got me to call everyone as though he’d discovered the greatest thing in the universe.”

“Pepper’s in on it too,” Stark winked conspiratorially at her indulgent but exasperated look.

“No, Tony, I’m not.”

Stark hits a button on his digital pad and a life-sized hologram of a well-known couple _in flagrante indelicato_ fills the room. With audio enhanced.

The room erupts in chaos.

Somewhere a chair is overturned and Stark’s prized liquor cabinet is wrenched open by Bruce Banner who grabs the most expensive bottles of scotch and bourbon.

Romanov reaches for the finest Vodka Stark Towers can ever offer as an arrow from Barton shatters his latest, state-of-the-art screen. Mjolnir is spinning a circle in the small lounge, destroying what hasn’t been destroyed of the furniture in time with its master’s loud bellows.

Steve Rogers is the only one frozen with his mouth hanging open, with his shield covering his face.

Tony Stark had never ever heard a dedicated stream of curses in so many languages in his life, all aimed at him. As novel as the experience is, it makes him wince.

“For six, fucking days, I’ve run on no sleep on an assignment with S.H.I.E.L.D. and you’ve called me just to look at this shit?”

“Whoa, whoa! Calm down, Barton. Your arrows are going nowhere.”

The expletive-ridden air is turning fouler by the minute as Jane’s moans grow louder with each second.

Stark hurriedly jabs at a button and stops the video feed, marginally calming down the hot and bothered occupants of the room.

“I’ll never be able to look Dr. Foster in the eye again after this.” Banner’s eyes are still squeezed shut, his hands clenching a bottle of bourbon.

Stark notices mournfully that half his favourite liquor has already disappeared.

“What is the meaning of this?” Like his namesake, Thor is looking as thunderous as he always does before a major battle.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Romanov cuts in brusquely. “It’s a sex tape of your godforsaken brother and your ex-girlfriend.”

“This is the raw footage that they did on their own,” Stark cuts in shamelessly, not looking the least bit guilty. “Jarvis hacked Dr. Foster’s laptop and got near 48 hours worth of—”

The groaning and cursing simply become louder.

“Hey, I thought it’s great entertainment! Who knew Reindeer Games could become so creative?”

“They’re viral,” Romanov observes the internet statistics dispassionately. “If the figures climb further, they’d be more famous than Madonna’s conical bras and—”

Steve Rogers still looks bewildered and not the least bit shocked by the crass vulgarity of this age. “Whoa, wait. Just who are these people?”

Barton is shaking his head. “Cap, my padawan, live and learn.”

Stark throws a significant look at Pepper, who looks vaguely impressed. Conquering the world by sex indeed. Even S.H.I.E.L.D. could never manage that.

Trust Reindeer Games to get his ten seconds of fame by hook or by crook.

_Well, fuck._

 

-Fin


	10. Number Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Audreyii_fic, who insidiously planted this damn idea on Tumblr. Post Thor: The Dark World. Was supposed to be a light-hearted one, until it wasn’t. *cringes*

A small finger jabs hard into the small, printed e-receipt in front of her. It’s pink, square, and full of hearts…and it makes Jane Foster recoil instantly.

“Be there. Eight o’clock. _The Bare Experience_.”

Jane chokes on her morning brew, then dabs at the strain on her pristine white blouse in annoyance. The slosh of hot coffee actually hurts, providing the best and most unpleasant wake-up call than any alarm could do.

Now she’s got a crap load of questions too early for a Monday morning and her intern already has the wrong ball rolling.

Maybe it’s best not to know. Nip this thing in the bud before Darcy got excited and roped everyone into a scheme that somehow always had Jane in an unintended starring role with disastrous consequences.

“Darcy, I’ve no idea what you’ve done, but the only thing I want to be there for is the energy converter that—”

“But you threw out the non-functioning part last Friday.”

Ugh. So she did. And had promptly forgotten all about it after an equation, a gourmet chocolate bar and a cheesy ‘80s flick stole her interest for the rest of the weekend.

The pink monstrosity gets waved in her face again.

“So, as I was saying,” Darcy drawls and rubs a finger suggestively over a red heart on the slip of paper, “you need to get out there.”

“Out where?”

“ _The Bare Experience_.”

“It’s a strip joint,” Jane says flatly and closes her eyes, thinking about the black opaqueness that the silver energy converter had begun to acquire thanks to her frequent handling of the device.

“Not anymore,” Darcy tells her smugly. “Thor threw his hammer through it and destroyed the joint completely, remember? That finally gave the management an excuse to rebuild it into a perfectly respectable restaurant. In fact, Thor accomplished everything that the council didn’t manage to achieve in twenty years. Maybe he should run for the Senate, but only if they can get over his muscly—”

She ignores the flicker of regret at the mention of Thor. “Whatever you’re planning, it’s a bad idea.”

“Speed-dating.”

“No. Remember the last time you pulled that prank with David, the truck’s carburettor and my mattress?”

“Food. Some small talk.”

“Or the time you tried setting me up with a Thor-wannabe stalker?”

“Just five minutes of your time per person. Think about it—“

Jane feels a headache coming on. “No.”

“—an hour later and you could meet the guy of your dreams without even needing to get up from your table.”

There aren’t enough stars in the universe to get out of this. “And you signed me up.”

“I know! It’s great, isn’t it?”

oOo

_The Bare Experience_ isn’t the run-down dingy hut of half-dressed women and drunk men that Jane remembers. The fashionable interior looks as though it had been lifted entirely from a celebrity-owned Swiss chalet and the soft, welcoming candlelight manages to trim the hard edges off the restaurant’s sleazy history.

The large pink banner (with hearts) above the main entrance spoils it all, dashing away the bit of enthusiasm she’s tried to muster up on the way here.

_Join us for our inaugural launch. Experience ‘The Bare Experience’ for singles. *No strippers (male or female) allowed._

With a grimace, she approaches the group that has already congregated around a large, long table and checks-in with the harried-looking manager who looks better suited to running a strip joint than a legitimate restaurant organising a speed-dating event.

Twelve women, twelve men.

“You’re number 8,” the manager (or Boyd, as his tag says) tells her without preamble, his rheumy eyes already on the door behind which the single men are hiding. “We’ll be moving counter-clockwise, from your right. It’s like musical chairs. But unlike musical chairs, there’ll be no one left without a seat. But the men will do the work and the moving. All you have to do is sit back and relax,” he chortles-snorts at his own joke and waggles his brows.

Jane gets assigned to somewhere in the middle of the table and reluctantly strikes up a conversation next to another woman whose palpable excitement makes the hair on her own neck stand. It seems wrong to admit that she’s only here to appease her intern when the other women are acting as though they’ve won the lottery of a lifetime.

The food gets served on silver platters just as twelve men strut into the dining room.

Number one takes his seat opposite her shuffles his feet a little shyly and it takes Jane all of her allotted five minutes to explain that astrophysicists aren’t morons who write the horoscopes for Cosmopolitan or any other girly magazine that hits the shelves monthly. Or that interstellar planetary bodies really aren’t fashionable phrases coined by the Kardashians.

Number two is a fellow scientist with a nervous tick in his eye and an alarming penchant for downing bourbon every time he mentions his mother or his work. On the too-much-information part, he’d also blurted out that he likes spanking, cuffs and bisexual partners when the mood struck.

Number three is a lovely divorcee, conservative but decent-looking in a boxy business suit that had seen better days. He’s just…so boring, which is saying something, because Darcy probably finds _her_ one of the most boring people in the world.

Number four only believes in eating local produce, bathing once a week and looks like Jesus Christ on a budget.

Number five has a straggly beard—and not the fashionable kind that graces the walkways these days—and smells of a peculiar mix Bengay and petrol.

Jane’s never more thankful for the militant screech of Boyd’s whistle and his stopwatch. She takes a large gulp from her glass of vintage Chardonnay and wonders if Darcy can call for a refund if she walked out...now.

By the time bachelor number six rolls around, she doesn’t bother to even look up from her food — a lobster ravioli with roasted lamb and pumpkin, which happens to be surprisingly delicious.

Six turns out to be a washout too, just like five, four, three, two and one. When he starts droning on about the private pétanque league (she wonders if that is a euphemism for something else?) that his weird friends are going to set up on the East Coast early next year, Jane starts to imagine her hands around his neck, squeezing hard.

_9:32 pm._

Six stumbles onto the next seat, helped along by the giggling woman on her right and a slim, pale hand that belongs to a face she never thought she’d ever see...again.

Oh no.

_No, no, no—_

“Jane Foster.”

She swallows hard. “Loki.”

But where she expects to see a pale, angular face full of inarticulate secrets when he’d last crouched over her in the acrid sands of _Svartalfheim_ , the blessing of hindsight simply gives her the bald truth in the cold light of day: a half-god dressed as spiffily as the next Wall Street guy, whose malicious brittleness is overlaid so smoothly with an otherworldly counsel that she cannot hope to understand.

The months after the Convergence had been a relentless tide of comings and goings, a breathless scientific journey through Stark labs and the wilds of Scandinavia…and finally, back to the dusty, mundane quiet of Puente Antiguo where it’d all begun. With intern and her intern’s intern, who was doing a passable stand in for Erik.

And Jane couldn’t be happier.

She’d given a thought (or two) to Loki’s inexplicable actions on that Dark World, even mourned a little for what he’d done back then. Like before, she had never proclaimed to understand the mindset of a raging god-turned-prisoner-turned-imposter and she wouldn’t start now. It had taken a little longer to scrub Thor from her head, but she’d made her peace with knowing that the dysfunctional family from the other side of _Yggdrasil_ would be better off wreaking their havoc in other realms without her in the centre of the action.

But the strange, strange pull that accompanies his presence isn’t diminished at all. It tilts her stable, ordered universe on its axis and sets it rolling into the filaments of the stardust she’d never been able to rub out of her eyes.

The ridiculousness of the situation doesn’t detract from the fact that that demi-god is sitting across her in the flesh, patiently waiting for the list of questions she has come up with to ask her dates.

Jane stifles the urge to laugh. The questions _ache_ to be asked—Why are you here? What’s up in the realms? What trouble have you gotten Thor into?—but all that she stutters out is—

“—Why…?”

He flicks his eyes towards the very-expensive looking watch, as though he is counting the minutes.

“Two minutes more, my dear Jane.”

It’s then that she realises she’d just spent the past three gaping in silence.

“Why, Loki?”

For once, he doesn’t bother to mince his words. “Perhaps it is because you have something that I want. You, Dr. Foster.”

No more games. She’d been played the fool enough, endured the wise-cracks and the mind games that people and creatures delighted in. Perhaps he knows that too.

“So tell me.”

The shock of looking into his sly green eyes doesn’t measure up to the shock when he gently takes her wrists and runs his fingers down the slight indentations of her veins.

A brief, incandescent flash of red races along her skin at the contact, a delicious ripple of power snaking through her from head to toe.

“Enough of this foolishness,” he urges in a conspiratorial whisper. “What an injustice it would be if you’d never recognised how…special you’ve become.”

She snatches her hands back as though burnt by his touch. Just like that, that veil of doubt and confusion lifts, whipped back into hiding under the Silvertongue’s cloak of deceit.

“What are you talking about—?”

He smiles pleasantly. “We shall need another date, Jane Foster.”

In a blink of an eye, bachelor number _seven_ slides into his empty seat.

She glances at the clock in disbelief.

_9:32 pm._

Just a figment of her imagination, then. Delayed PTSD, maybe. Hallucination caused by candlelight.

Except for the tingling in her wrists and the mocking look in that dim corner which she cannot ignore.


End file.
